Lot Essay
The wall-brackets, conceived in the French picturesque manner and inspired by the history of the gods, celebrate the triumph of Poetry and Music. Winged Victory presents palms to laurel-wreathed Apollo perched beside water and accompanied by a singing swan. Brackets of this pattern in the Cabinet Room at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk are likely to have been supplied about 1755 by the sculptor John Cheere (d. 1787) and were intended to support bronzed plaster busts of ancient poets (see 'Rococo, Art and Design in Hogarth's England', Victoria and Albert Museum, 16 May - 30 September 1984, Exhibition Catalogue S55).